Steinhatchee Marina at Deadman’s Bay

The marina was OK, but what makes this place a 1 star is the 'full service' part when I hired their mechanic to do some work. He is the only one in town as far as I can tell, and he knows it. This review is based on my experience as detailed below, and is my personal opinion based of the facts as I see them. Their shop foreman Sevin is a con man and dangerous liar and I would not recommend anyone get any work done here. I personally believe he is dangerous to their customers and may get someone killed by claiming work was done when it wasn't, possibly leaving someone in a bad situation at sea or in a ship channel. This details my personal experience with the shop manager at Steinhatchee Marina named Sevin and his manager named Chris. Happening from December 11th to December 25th 2023. In the end, the marina manager Chris seems to only ask is the engine running when that is not the point of the work. It has always run perfectly when the fuel is clean . The point is to make it reliable so we are safe when running under motor power in a channel with enormous ships around us which would suck us under and chew us up in their propeller if we lost engine power. The last text with the manager Chris he accuses me of just being a squeaky wheel and trying to get a discount to which I replied then why would I have left them even $120 tip for a $1,700 bill if I was so cheap. And of course my wife Deb is a witness to all of this as well as another person who overheard him saying he was going to pump the fuel out of the tank. In my opinion they did very little work and they are endangering people's lives and they don't seem to care at all either Sevin or the manager Chris. Upon checking his work I found: A. Did not take out injectors off for cleaning as claimed. When I told him there was still deep rust in the bolt grooves so he could not have removed the nuts holding the injectors to the engine, he replied they just took the fuel return line off the top and pull them out for cleaning. Totally a lie, nothing there but a hole for fuel, injectors are at opposite end of injector body which must be taken off the engine and turned upside down in a vice with a large nut to be loosened which holds the injector assembly together. Chris just said I was looking at a glow plug, this engine does not have glow plugs and that would not make sense anyway. I have pictures. B. Left a broken hose on the tank vent fitting which could let water into the tank. I have pictures. C. All three air bleed points were still partially loose after he told me he found them and tighten them and confirm that with me two more times when I asked him to be sure. I have pictures. D. At this point I suspected the fuel tank was not cleaned at all so I ran a small hose into the tank with an electric pump and immediately pulled out about a gallon of water and a lot of debris and and some diesel out into a clear jug. Upon showing this to Sevin he claimed it was 'Green Diesel' and when I shook the jug it stayed separated so he claimed Green Diesel doesn't mix with Red Diesel! So I drained some of the water out of the bottom of the jug and hit it with a propane torch for 20 seconds, of course it was water. At this point he walked off and never came back. I have pictures. E. I found one Racor still blocked. Probably why he switched boost pump to other filter. Also the way he changed the plumbing would cause the Boost pump to put back pressure on the unused Racor since it did not have any valves to close it off. F. I cleaned the Racors and rebuilt them. I found them to be extremely dirty to the point that one of them was not functional because of the gunk under the diffuser ball valve was holding the ball valve closed. Obviously they did not even take them apart or attempt to clean them. Another lie. I have pictures.

If you get a chance to go to Steinhatchee, the Steinhatchee Marina @ Deadmans Bay is a MUST stop! The marina is beautiful and has floating docks, a very nice ship and package store, and a huge outside restaurant/bar with heaters. Great wings and flat bread pizzas. There is no way I can describe the southern hospitality and customer service. It was incredible. Conner watched us in on Nebo and was there to tie us up and hooked up elec and water. Niles was available at all times for rides to grocery or dollar general or to pump fuel. We rode out a very bad storm here and there were 5 or 6 workers constantly checking on us and inviting us to go to their marina building for shelter. Very reasonable prices. Best stop yet heading south from Kentucky. Top Notch marina!

Scallop trip August 17 & 18. Amazing how bad this place was for a scallop trip. Sea Hags has been great for years but decided to go with the new guys to get new stuff. Jokes on us. The rental boats came up used from some other marina. I took pics for this review but no upload ability. The cushions were black from mildew with the seams ripped apart from rot. In boat checkout the guy made big deal about us paying if we broke it. He said he noted on form that some paint was off prop but kept skag in the water. He was being so picky I raised motor to see skag, it was broken off with some cheesy piece of plastic bolted on to create a skag. Boat did run well. We were going to buy new stuff to support the new guys. We wanted catch bags, gloves and new mask. The marina store had none of this; only child mask & fin sets like at Walmart, none for adults. No gloves available and only small string mesh bags like used for mask clear & supplies for $19.99, no scallop bags. So we went to Sea Hags, 15 different types of mask fully stocked, about a dozen different types of gloves and different catch bags. The bag the Hatch marina had was $6.95 here. You are only allowed one 5 gallon bucket with boat rental even though limit is 10 gallons per boat. I wanted a 2nd bucket and the manager got very rude, said he started with 1000 buckets and only 20 left because of customer theft. What?? Now the marina store had more fishing baits than you can imagine, fully stocked shoes and boots, 5 different spear guns and the best stocked liquor store in The Hatch. Just not the stuff you need to scallop during scallop season. This place is the worst miss-allocation of capital that I have seen in retail. Throw in a marina manager that is rude and doesn’t seem to speak the truth and I give the place a well deserved 1 of 5 stars. What a shame.

Brand new in July with floating docks, fueling at ever slip, huge patio with food & drinks and the MOST wonderful owners & staff!!